Katy Stubbs PhD Neuroscience, 2016 and BSc Biomedical Sciences, 2011

Science Communications Officer at Alzheimer's Research UK

For my PhD at Southampton, I was trying to understand how brain cells die in dementia by studying a particular part of the cell which we believe gets damaged as people age.

I’m a science communicator for Alzheimer’s Research UK. We have a great team and everyone is engaged and passionate about the job. It’s very varied ranging from working with the press to add a bit of balance when inaccurate stories come out about Alzheimer’s, to writing up our own research in ordinary language. I also help our fundraising teams to understand what our scientists are doing so they can talk to donors about it. Essentially I’m raising awareness of dementia and emphasising the fact that we need more research into it.

Katy Stubbs

For my PhD at Southampton, I was trying to understand how brain cells die in dementia by studying a particular part of the cell which we believe gets damaged as people age. I’ve always been fascinated by the brain right from when I was a child, trying to work out why people do things and why certain diseases affect our brains in different ways.

All throughout my PhD, I did a lot of public engagement, going into schools and talking about my research and inviting people into the lab. I really enjoyed doing that so when this role came up at the biggest research charity in Alzheimer’s, it was literally my dream job.